Conservation Options: Toward a Greater Private Role
By Barton H. Thompson, Jr.
INTRODUCTION
The federal government helps ensure the preservation of environmentally valuable private lands through a variety of mechanisms. The United States government regulates the development of private land through laws such as the Endangered Species Act; finances the acquisition of fee and servitude interests by federal, state, and local governmental agencies; provides grants to land trusts and other non-governmental organizations for land conservation; and uses tax laws to support the preservation efforts of nonprofit conservation organizations. The federal government did not consciously plan the current mix of regulation, governmental acquisition, grants, and tax incentives. Nor has Congress or the executive branch ever thought carefully about the ideal mix of conservation tools. Little, if any, thought has been given to the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, the most appropriate setting in which to use each method, or the extent to which the current approaches reinforces or undermines each other.
This article steps back, examines the choice among approaches, and considers whether the current mix and coordination of approaches is roughly “optimal.” In measuring optimality, the Article takes a largely and unabashedly utilitarian perspective: society should conserve land to the extent that the benefits of conservation outweigh the costs, and it should do so at the lowest practicable cost. The benefits of conservation are diverse and frequently difficult to calculate. The benefits include commercial use values (e.g., the opportunity to charge a fee for duck hunting on a preserved wetland), non-commercial use values (e.g., pleasurable views), and non-use values (i.e., option, existence, and bequest value). Although the benefits of conservation are many and often large, the benefits are also limited; land conservation is not of infinite value. Conservation, moreover, is costly; conservation has an opportunity cost equal to other uses to which the land could be put. As a first approximation, therefore, a conservation policy is optimal when it helps ensure that the amount of land conserved, after factoring in uncertainties and irreversibilities, maximizes the net benefits to society from conservation, and when the policy minimizes the cost of the conservation.
Economic efficiency is not the only criterion by which the optimality of the government's mix of approaches must be judged. As discussed below, a major difference among approaches lies in who pays for the conservation. Property owners, for example, bear the cost of regulation, while taxpayers bear at least part of the cost of direct governmental acquisitions. Although efficiency may be relevant in choosing who should bear the cost, concepts of fairness are also important.
This article's focus on federal efforts to preserve private lands is not meant to downplay the importance of public lands or of state and local efforts to preserve land. The federal government's management of the public domain dwarfs in historical significance the federal government's role in preserving currently private lands. As shown in Table 1, four major national land agencies (the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service) managed over 620 million acres of land in 1994. Almost half of this land was “managed for conservation,” in the loose sense of not being open for general mineral extraction or other commercial use. The government purchased only a small percentage of this land from private property holders. As shown in Table 2, for example, of the approximately 91 million acres of wildlife refuges currently managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, over 90 percent was reserved from the public domain or obtained from other federal agencies. Less than 10 percent of the acreage involved federal acquisition - and thus conservation - of private land or easements.
The federal government helps ensure the preservation of environmentally valuable private lands through a variety of mechanisms. The United States government regulates the development of private land through laws such as the Endangered Species Act; finances the acquisition of fee and servitude interests by federal, state, and local governmental agencies; provides grants to land trusts and other non-governmental organizations for land conservation; and uses tax laws to support the preservation efforts of nonprofit conservation organizations. The federal government did not consciously plan the current mix of regulation, governmental acquisition, grants, and tax incentives. Nor has Congress or the executive branch ever thought carefully about the ideal mix of conservation tools. Little, if any, thought has been given to the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, the most appropriate setting in which to use each method, or the extent to which the current approaches reinforces or undermines each other.
This article steps back, examines the choice among approaches, and considers whether the current mix and coordination of approaches is roughly “optimal.” In measuring optimality, the Article takes a largely and unabashedly utilitarian perspective: society should conserve land to the extent that the benefits of conservation outweigh the costs, and it should do so at the lowest practicable cost. The benefits of conservation are diverse and frequently difficult to calculate. The benefits include commercial use values (e.g., the opportunity to charge a fee for duck hunting on a preserved wetland), non-commercial use values (e.g., pleasurable views), and non-use values (i.e., option, existence, and bequest value). Although the benefits of conservation are many and often large, the benefits are also limited; land conservation is not of infinite value. Conservation, moreover, is costly; conservation has an opportunity cost equal to other uses to which the land could be put. As a first approximation, therefore, a conservation policy is optimal when it helps ensure that the amount of land conserved, after factoring in uncertainties and irreversibilities, maximizes the net benefits to society from conservation, and when the policy minimizes the cost of the conservation.
Economic efficiency is not the only criterion by which the optimality of the government's mix of approaches must be judged. As discussed below, a major difference among approaches lies in who pays for the conservation. Property owners, for example, bear the cost of regulation, while taxpayers bear at least part of the cost of direct governmental acquisitions. Although efficiency may be relevant in choosing who should bear the cost, concepts of fairness are also important.
This article's focus on federal efforts to preserve private lands is not meant to downplay the importance of public lands or of state and local efforts to preserve land. The federal government's management of the public domain dwarfs in historical significance the federal government's role in preserving currently private lands. As shown in Table 1, four major national land agencies (the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service) managed over 620 million acres of land in 1994. Almost half of this land was “managed for conservation,” in the loose sense of not being open for general mineral extraction or other commercial use. The government purchased only a small percentage of this land from private property holders. As shown in Table 2, for example, of the approximately 91 million acres of wildlife refuges currently managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, over 90 percent was reserved from the public domain or obtained from other federal agencies. Less than 10 percent of the acreage involved federal acquisition - and thus conservation - of private land or easements.
